Play with smart speaker design: Hold TI system solutions and look forward to unlimited possibilities in the future!

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Play with smart speaker design: Hold TI system solutions and look forward to unlimited possibilities in the future! [Copy link]

 

Play with smart speaker design: Hold the TI system solution and look forward to unlimited possibilities in the future!

In recent years, the smart speaker industry has gradually become hot. In this market with a scale of over 30 million worldwide, 2017 is called the "first year of the smart speaker industry" by many friends. At present, smart speakers not only have voice interaction functions, but also have AI artificial intelligence technology, life O2O, smart home control and multimedia resource playback. Recently, Mr. Xin Benwei, market development manager of Texas Instruments, shared the "TI Smart Speaker Design System Solution", the challenges that the smart speaker industry will encounter in design, and TI's smart speaker solution at the "2018 (Summer) China Smart Speaker Industry Summit Forum". He also looked forward to the future trends of the smart speaker industry.

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Challenge? TI is here to take on the challenge!

1. The first challenge: cost

The power amplifier consumes the most power in a smart speaker, which is one of the aspects to consider when reducing system design costs.

There are two points to focus on here: the balance between sound quality and cost.

"How good is the sound quality?" is our first consideration. With rich experience in consumer electronics applications, we realize that the first biggest challenge for the entire market industry is cost. For example, if you want to ensure sound quality, you must use good inductors. And the price of four inductors is about $0.12 to $0.20. This cost is actually very high.

Here TI challenges an area that the industry has not challenged for many years: using filtering and ferrite beads to remove inductors, while saving system costs for end users, achieving better sound quality performance.

2. The second biggest challenge: battery life, heat

Few people know that when you are not playing songs, as long as the speaker is not turned off, it will continue to consume power. TI's innovative hybrid modulation reduces idle current to 20 mA, a 50% reduction from before; the latest TPA3128 and TAS5825 product series have an internal resistance of only 90 milliohms, but their efficiency is improved by 90%; the current in shutdown mode is as low as 2 microamps.

For customers, their challenge used to be cost, but now it is how to make the playback time longer and the temperature rise lower without adding extra cost (battery capacity). TI is also very concerned about these design challenges and is committed to helping customers solve them.

3. The third challenge: echo cancellation

Today, many smart speakers use multiple microphones for voice recognition, which involves echo cancellation technology. When the music is playing loudly, how to remove the ambient sound; or when doing voice recognition, how to remove the music being played, these are all things that must be considered when designing smart speakers. In response to the specific environmental noise (ambient noise) added during external playback, TI has designed a new mechanism - Acoustic Echo Cancelation, which uses the DSP inside the amplifier to process the signal processed by the amplifier itself (EQ, DRC, etc.) are fed back internally to the main chip for echo cancellation, thereby improving the voice recognition after echo cancellation. The latest TAS58xx series products are specifically designed for the needs of smart speakers. By providing an SDOUT (electronic sound output) signal, the main processor and DSP can cancel the signal, thereby achieving accurate voice capture.

4.The fourth challenge: smaller size, better sound quality

Today's smart speakers are very beautiful. They are small, round barrels, or square boxes, very beautiful. However, as the size becomes smaller, the output power requirements become higher. According to customer needs, making the sound louder on the basis of smaller size is sometimes a huge challenge for the overall design.

The TAS58XX series is a digital input closed-loop structure. With the help of PPC3 GUI, 3-band DRC and 3D sound spatialization, it has on-chip Hi-Res and SmartEQ sound signal processing capabilities up to 192kHz.

Trend! Listen to TI's talk about the future

First of all, no matter what kind of speaker you make, the ultimate focus is on the pursuit of high sound quality. In terms of high fidelity, TI can configure different products according to the level of functional requirements.

Secondly, interactive voice communication will become the next mainstream market demand. Many Bluetooth speakers on the market now do not have voice recognition. In the future, Bluetooth plus voice recognition and voice interaction will become the market standard.

In addition, although the speakers are getting smaller, it is necessary to increase the output power. People will want to hear clear music in a relatively wide space. Therefore, on the basis of increasing power, battery power will also be an unchanging demand. Portable smart speakers with built-in batteries are the best. Customers do not need to buy a speaker for each room, but let the speakers go out of the door. Users can carry smart speakers wherever they go and use them. This will be the direction of the next demand.

Looking back at the development history of speakers, from large, home-use, slowly to personal intelligence, miniaturization, this process has been going on for nearly ten years. And the future will be small smart speakers. We will let smart speakers carry 5G technology, plus apps, go out of the house and travel around the world. Mr. Xin said that in order to pursue some beautiful industrial designs, we will pursue buttonless metal plates, etc., but behind these industrial designs, it needs some higher requirements to support. You get what you pay for. Under the premise of ensuring performance, sound quality and listening experience, TI will make corresponding efforts to reduce system costs for customers as much as possible.

To facilitate rapid system design, TI provides a complete set of smart speaker system block diagrams and subsystem solutions to achieve longer battery life, better sound quality experience, stable connectivity and fast charging effect of smart speakers. Click for details.

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